Richard Jenkins

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After decades of work in regional theater and made-for-television movies, American character actor Richard Jenkins began to attract the attention of critics and audiences in the late 1990s with quiet but engrossing performances in a wide variety of feature films. Equally capable at both broad comedy and drama, he frequently essayed tightly controlled men of authority, including judges, government agents, detectives and medical professionals. Occasionally, his characters spun wildly out of control - a DEA agent who experiences a spectacular LSD trip in "Flirting With Disaster" (1996), or staid funeral director Richard Fisher, whose sudden death reveals a long-hidden secret life on the acclaimed series "Six Feet Under" (HBO, 2001-05) - which was often the highlight of the project. He was also a favorite performer of the Coen Brothers, appearing in "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001), "Intolerable Cruelty" (2003) and "Burn After Reading" (2008). While mainly a character actor, Jenkins finally graduated to leading man status in the independent film "The Visitor" (2008), for which he received excellent notices, while also appearing in "Eat Pray Love" (2010) and "The Rum Diary" (2011). Though not quite a household name, Jenkins remained a busy actor who landed prominent parts in some of Hollywood's biggest movies.Born May 4, 1947 in DeKalb, IL, Jenkins earned a degree in drama from Wesleyan University before attending a graduate theater program at Indiana State College. While there, he began studying with acclaimed acting coach Harold Guskin, whose exploratory approach greatly informed Jenkins' style of performance. He later developed a long and distinguished career in regional theater, most notably with the Trinity Repertory Theater in Rhode Island - his home for over 30 years - where he also served as artistic director. Jenkins began appearing in films and television in the mid-1970s, starting with a 1974 PBS broadcast of a Trinity Repertory performance of the play "Feasting With Panthers," about the imprisonment of playwright Oscar Wilde. The following year, Jenkins briefly relocated with his wife and family to Los Angeles to try his hand at more on-camera work, but he found the experience unrewarding, returning to Providence after only 10 months.Jenkins slowly began building more TV and feature credits in the early 1980s, including turns as Veronica Cartwright's husband in "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987) and a string of cops, agents, and other serious types in "Little Nikita" (1988), "Sea of Love" (1989), and the TV movie "Challenger" (1990), in which he played engineer Gregory Jarvis, who perished aboard the space shuttle when it exploded in 1986. After a decade of mostly dramatic roles, Jenkins earned his widest notices for David O. Russell's "Flirting With Disaster" (1996), a smart comedy of errors with an all-star cast, including Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Lily Tomlin, Alan Alda, and George Segal. Jenkins received some of the best reviews for the film as a by-the-books DEA agent who not only reveals that he is in love with his partner (Josh Brolin), but experiences a show-stopping acid freakout in the film's final third. The dichotomy between Jenkins' staid exterior and his unbridled performance yielded considerable laughs, as well as a 1997 Independent Spirit nomination. Comedic roles soon began popping up between his more straight-laced performances. He was well utilized by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who first cast him in an uncredited turn as a psychiatrist in "There's Something About Mary" (1999) before tapping him for supporting turns in their Jim Carrey feature "Me, Myself and Irene" (2000) and as the stroke-stricken dad to Heather Graham in "Say It Isn't So" (2001).Another set of famous filmmaker siblings, Joel and Ethan Coen, also made excellent use of Jenkins' versatile skills. The writing-directing team first became aware of him after he auditioned for William H. Macy's role in "Fargo" (1996), but did not cast h